The personal costs of activism

I’ve been reflecting constantly about the role I have adopted as an activist over the past months. I’ve been compelled to; because of the tumultuous results of my activism on every single aspect of my life.

There is no hiding place when the emotional toll of fighting seemingly insurmountable fights hits, and hits hard. It is all-consuming, stealing health, love, sleep, appetite, and spirit.

You might say I’m ill-equipped for these struggles since I’m bipolar, and it’s true that my mental health has often seemed beyond my control in those moments. But then I ask you, who is prepared for fighting issues like structural racism, the ravages of the climate crisis for the most at-risk people in the world, or the bloodshed caused by a brutal dictatorship?

These are the struggles I have taken up. I cannot say that I have chosen to take them because I can’t recall a moment of conscious decision-making. I became involved with them through various means, sometimes by simply listening to a story and being unable to forget. I have questioned many times though whether I am built for these titanic fights. For anyone involved with the struggle to address the climate crisis, I share your fear and your despair.

They always feel terrifying in their scale and complexity, but local and straightforward issues that more directly affect me and even my loved ones feel less urgent, less in need of my intervention. I know that I live in a place of privilege and relative comfort and that those with a voice will be heard. I have always felt like I need to speak for those whose stories go unheard, whose voices are silenced. I have often wished I could look away, but it isn’t possible for me. I’m sure I have been damned with this affliction, among the many others I suffer with.

My parents were immigrants, and I have lived in different countries with very different cultures, so perhaps my connection with those peoples that we so readily ‘other’ in the global north is simply born of the relationships I have had in those places. When I write and campaign about their suffering — their murder, torture, and rape — that suffering becomes wedded to my consciousness, and impossible to separate.

But as I reflect on how I have reacted to these emotions, I must admit my own failures. It has cost me in the most severe of ways; I have lost the love of my partner, whose mental health struggles I could not see through the heavy veil of my own suffering.

Without her, I feel lost, completely unmoored from any sense of home. However much I’ve tried, I’ve failed to resolve our differences. It is a loss that feels devastating and unjust, but I know I must begin to learn how to navigate the grief I feel.

While I attempt that impossible task, the essential nature of my activism means that there are people who are relying on me to continue to fight for them and to succeed. It’s a duality I must adapt to, somehow.

As a community, we rarely speak about the costs of activism…the most personal and unfathomable costs.

So here I am, revealing the costs of mine, having learned, too late, not to deflect the pain you feel onto people you love around you. Cherish their presence with all you have and allow them to see how vulnerable and how fragile you really are. Let them connect with you so that you may connect with them and see the truth beyond yourself.

You cannot be expected to be bigger than the world around you, and do not judge yourself by that false expectation. It will damn you and make you alien to those who care about you. When you immerse yourself in the brutal reality of injustice and terror, you cannot stand alone.